‘I need to save my culture’: Ukrainian fashion designers put on defiant show at London Fashion Week
- Fashion designers send message of defiance down the catwalk, with one featuring clothes made of neckties Ukrainian men don’t need now they’re in army fatigues
- The ‘fragility of life’ inspires Julie Paskal’s appliqué ‘butterfly’ dresses, while Ivan Frolov’s knitwear features the Ukrainian wheat ear fertility symbol
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Ukrainian designers sent out a defiant message at London Fashion Week with clothes made from the neckties their menfolk no longer wear and butterfly motifs to symbolise the “fragility of life”.
The three collections, by fashion labels Kseniaschnaider, Paskal and Frolov, were put together in Ukraine despite constant interruptions from missile attacks and air raid sirens.
“I think it’s really important not to stop,” said Ksenia Schnaider, one half of the husband-and-wife team behind the Kseniaschnaider label.
The designer has been travelling back and forth from Ukraine and her new base in the UK, where her daughter is at school, since taking the decision to carry on with fashion despite the war.
Schnaider feared she might “never be able to create again” after being forced to leave Kyiv last March.
But after travelling to Hungary, then Germany and finally Britain, she decided she had to continue for the sake of herself and her team.
“You can’t stop even if reality is terrible, you should continue doing what you do best, still be creative, try to bring beauty to this world of tragedy,” she said backstage.
“There’s a lot of new meanings in this. It’s not just being a fashion designer like it used to be – I need to save my culture and my traditions.”
Kseniaschnaider’s autumn/winter 2023 collection featured plenty of the brand’s trademark denim along with blazers and skirts made out of surplus stocks of neckties now that Ukrainian men have swapped them for military fatigues.
“It’s really meaningful because Ukrainian men don’t need ties now because they are fighting,” she said.
But she felt they made the right decision and was “incredibly grateful” to London Fashion Week for hosting them while their own annual event in Kyiv is displaced.
Her laser-cut appliqué “butterfly” creations were inspired by the “fragility of life and death”, Paskal said.
Creating collections is our resistance to war … and a reflection of the courage of all Ukrainians
The war had brought “dark times in our country” but “this is a balance we need to have”, said the designer, who is now based in Germany but regularly travels to Ukraine to keep her label going.
“I think that for all of us it was a kind of will to go forward because … you can’t just sit and cry. You need to move, to do whatever you can,” she said.
Frolov designer Ivan Frolov – originally inspired by drag and transgender culture – looked to Ukraine’s “cultural heritage” in his creations, with hand-knitted sweaters with the Ukrainian wheat ear fertility symbol and corset dresses embroidered with Swarovski crystals.
In a statement, Ukrainian Fashion Week said: “Creating collections is our resistance to war … and a reflection of the courage of all Ukrainians.”
